The Most Beautiful Places in Saudi Arabia
13 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Saudi Arabia are Al-Masjid Al-Haram, Hegra and Prophet's Mosque. The list covers 13 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Saudi Arabia covers most of the Arabian Peninsula, and its landscape is far more varied than sand alone. In the northwest, wind has carved sandstone into towers and arches around AlUla; along the west, the Hejaz and Asir mountains rise high above the Red Sea, with dark lava fields between them. Through these lands ran the incense routes that made the Nabataeans rich, and here lie Mecca and Medina, the two holiest cities of Islam, as well as the mud-brick towns of the Najd.
Al-Masjid al-Haram in Mecca surrounds the Kaaba and is the largest mosque in the world, while the Prophet's Mosque in Medina is known for its green dome. In the northwest, Hegra was the southern city of the Nabataeans, the people of Petra: more than a hundred monumental tombs are cut into its outcrops, and the solitary Qasr al-Farid stands apart, carved from a single rock and left unfinished. Nearby, Elephant Rock is an eroded sandstone arch shaped like its namesake.
The rest of the country brings other forms. At-Turaif in Diriyah, the first capital of the Saudi dynasty, is a citadel of Najdi mud-brick architecture. In the Asir mountains, Rijal Almaa stacks stone tower houses on a steep slope, and Thee Ain sits on a white rock above palm groves. Al Naslaa is a boulder split cleanly in two, Al Wahbah a volcanic crater floored with white crystals, Wadi al-Disah a palm-filled canyon, and the rock art of the Hail region records thousands of years of human and animal figures.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Al-Masjid Al-Haram | Mosque | |
| 2 | Hegra | Necropolis | ✓ |
| 3 | Prophet's Mosque | Mosque | |
| 4 | At-Turaif District | Archaeological site | |
| 5 | Thee Ain | Most beautiful village | |
| 6 | Rijal Almaa | Most beautiful village | |
| 7 | Al Naslaa Rock | Archaeological site | |
| 8 | Elephant Rock (Jabal AlFil) | Rock formation | |
| 9 | Al Wahbah crater | Volcanic crater lake | |
| 10 | Qasr al-Farid | Rock-cut architecture | |
| 11 | Wadi al-Disah | Canyon | |
| 12 | Rock Art in the Hail Region | Archaeological site | ✓ |
| 13 | Edge of the World | Cliff |
01 Al-Masjid Al-Haram
Saudi Arabia · 1.3 km from Mecca21.422° N 39.826° E
Saudipics.com · CC BY-SA 4.0 Muslim tradition holds that the Kaaba at the centre of this mosque was first built by Abraham and his son Ishmael, and that the Prophet Muhammad, after his conquest of Mecca in 630 CE, cleared away the idols that had gathered around it and rededicated the site to the worship of one God.
Did you know? The oldest surviving parts of the building are domes and columns from a renovation that Sultan Selim II entrusted to the architect Mimar Sinan in 1570.
02 Hegra
Saudi Arabia26.814° N 37.947° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Following Hadrian · CC BY-SA 2.0 Hegra, also known as Mada'in Salih or al-Hijr, was the southern outpost of the Nabataeans, the trading people whose capital was Petra. It was their second city, and in one respect it surpasses Petra: its rock-cut tombs are often better preserved.
Did you know? A monumental Latin inscription of AD 175 to 177 records the Roman garrison, drawn mainly from the legion Legio III Cyrenaica.
03 Prophet's Mosque
Saudi Arabia · 5 km from Medina24.468° N 39.611° E
Image by ebrahim from Pixabay Al-Masjid an-Nabawi, the Mosque of the Prophet, stands at the heart of Medina and is the second holiest site in Islam after the Great Mosque of Mecca. 6 metres high, and three doors. It served as a place of prayer, a court, a school and a meeting hall for the young community.
Did you know? In Islamic tradition a fourth burial place in the chamber beside the Prophet's grave is kept empty for Jesus, whom Muslims believe will return.
04 At-Turaif District
Saudi Arabia · 18.3 km from Riyadh24.733° N 46.576° E
Radosław Botev · CC BY 3.0 pl At-Turaif is the citadel of Diriyah, the mud-brick town on the north-western edge of present-day Riyadh where the House of Saud began.
Did you know? The 1818 siege is estimated to have cost the Egyptian army about 10,000 men and the defenders some 1,800; the victors also cut down the palm groves.
05 Thee Ain
Saudi Arabia19.931° N 41.443° E
Rbmq · CC BY-SA 4.0 Thee Ain rises in tiers up a pale hill of white marble in the mountains of south-western Saudi Arabia, its stone houses stacked so closely that from the valley the whole village looks like one carved outcrop.
Did you know? Saudi Arabia added Thee Ain to its UNESCO World Heritage tentative list in 2015.
06 Rijal Almaa
Saudi Arabia · 24.1 km from Abha18.212° N 42.273° E
Richard Mortel · CC BY 2.0 Rijal Almaa is a village of stone towers in a deep valley of the Asir mountains in southwestern Saudi Arabia, below the escarpment west of Abha. Around sixty houses stand packed together on the slope, many of them several storeys high and some rising to as many as eight floors.
Did you know? Traditionally the lower floors held livestock and stores while families lived higher up, which also made the houses easier to defend.
07 Al Naslaa Rock
Saudi Arabia27.229° N 38.572° E
Disdero · CC BY-SA 4.0 In the desert south of the oasis of Tayma, in northwestern Saudi Arabia, a block of sandstone about 6 metres high and 9 metres wide stands split into two halves by a gap so straight that it looks as if it had been cut with a blade.
Did you know? The narrow pedestals are a classic mushroom-rock form, worn back at the base where windblown sand and moisture in the shaded underside attack the stone hardest.
08 Elephant Rock (Jabal AlFil)
Saudi Arabia26.689° N 37.982° E
Uhooep · CC BY-SA 4.0 Out on the open sand north-east of AlUla, a single block of reddish sandstone stands 52 metres high, and from the right angle it is unmistakably an elephant: a massive domed body and a long trunk reaching down to the sand.
Did you know? The site is looked after by the Royal Commission for AlUla, a body created by royal order in July 2017 to protect and develop the region.
09 Al Wahbah crater
Saudi Arabia22.900° N 41.139° E
Prof. Mortel · CC BY 2.0 In the middle of the dark lava plains of western Saudi Arabia the ground opens into an almost perfect bowl about 2 km across and roughly 250 metres deep, its floor gleaming white.
Did you know? Some of the crater's microbes thrive in heat, high salinity and strong alkalinity at once, and appear able to resist radiation that damages DNA.
10 Qasr al-Farid
Saudi Arabia26.774° N 37.961° E
Saudi Press Agency (SPA) · CC BY-SA 4.0 Qasr al-Farid, "the Lonely Castle", is the largest tomb at Hegra, the Nabataean city in the desert north of AlUla, and it owes its name to its solitude.
Did you know? The façade blends Egyptian and Greco-Roman ideas, combining crow-step ornament and an Egyptian-style cornice with Corinthian capitals and a classical pediment.
11 Wadi al-Disah
Saudi Arabia27.631° N 36.549° E
Rahman Salem · CC BY-SA 4.0 Wadi al-Disah – also known as Wadi Qaraqir – is a desert canyon that behaves like an oasis.
Did you know? Rock inscriptions here include both Nabataean script and early Arabic written in Kufic letters, alongside petroglyphs.
12 Rock Art in the Hail Region
Saudi Arabia28.000° N 40.900° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Heritage Commission · CC BY-SA 4.0 On sandstone outcrops at the edge of the Nafud desert, thousands of figures pecked into the rock record some ten thousand years of life in northern Arabia: people with raised arms, ibex, cattle, horses and camels, palm trees and the outlines of human feet.
Did you know? Some of the camels pecked into the rock are life-size and date from the Thamudic period, roughly 3,000 years ago.
13 Edge of the World
Saudi Arabia24.946° N 45.991° E
Sammy Six · CC BY 2.0 Northwest of Riyadh, the flat plateau of Najd ends without warning: the ground runs to a sheer edge and then falls some 300 metres to a plain that stretches to the horizon.
Did you know? The popular name compares the lookout with the famous overlooks of the Grand Canyon in Arizona.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Saudi Arabia?
- On our list, Al-Masjid Al-Haram ranks first, followed by Hegra and Prophet's Mosque.
- Who built Hegra?
- Hegra, also known as Mada'in Salih, was built by the Nabataeans, the same people who built Petra, mostly in the first century BC and first century AD. In 2008 it became Saudi Arabia's first UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- What is Al Naslaa rock?
- Al Naslaa is a sandstone boulder near the oasis of Tayma, split by a remarkably straight vertical fissure into two halves standing on narrow bases. Its faces carry ancient petroglyphs.
- How was Al Wahbah crater formed?
- Al Wahbah is a maar, a crater created when rising magma met groundwater and caused a violent steam explosion. Its floor is covered with white crystalline deposits left by evaporating water.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Saudi Arabia?
- In our collection, the places in Saudi Arabia are most often archaeological sites (3), rock formations (2), mosques (2) and villages (2).
- How many places are on this list in Saudi Arabia?
- The list covers 13 places.